


make no apologies

by sphesphe



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2016 Winter Classic, Anger, Boston Bruins, Forgiveness, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 20:48:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5641390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sphesphe/pseuds/sphesphe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrice has heard Brad apologize, a lot. Over the years, to coaches, to the media, to players on rival teams, to other teammates. More recently, he’s heard Brad apologize to the room, and he’s seen Brad making the rounds one-on-one: taking every single guy aside at some point, including all the newest faces, and going through the speech. Everyone except for Patrice himself.</p><p>He’s thankful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	make no apologies

**Author's Note:**

> aka, Brad Marchand got himself suspended right before the Winter Classic, the Bruins were shit, and everyone was mad, especially Patrice Bergeron. So this is me working out my feelings through, apparently, porn (though this is less "porn with feelings" and much more "feelings with porn tacked on").

Patrice has heard Brad apologize, a lot. Over the years, to coaches, to the media, to players on rival teams, to other teammates.

More recently, he’s heard Brad apologize to the room, and he’s seen Brad making the rounds one-on-one: taking every single guy aside at some point, including all the newest faces, and going through the speech. Everyone except for Patrice himself.

Marchy sits pitifully in the press box, goes somber-faced through optional practice: unsmiling through his penance. He’s so obviously Sorry. At stray moments Patrice feels the weight of Brad’s gaze lingering upon him, but despite that, Brad doesn’t come to him.

He’s thankful. It gives him time to try and work through his less productive feelings, come to a place of acceptance. Or at least resignation.

But in the end, the day before Brad’s first game back, he does come after all: sidling up besides Patrice, seriousness sitting wrongly on his features, asking, “Hey, look, do you have a minute? Can we talk for a sec?”

“Saving the best for last?” Patrice says. Brad flinches, and Patrice might feel a little bad about it, except he doesn’t really. Can’t, yet.

They go into one of the empty meeting rooms and Brad shuts the door. Half-sits on a corner of a table, shoots back to his feet as if undeserving of rest, bites his lip. Then he darts a look up at Patrice and starts it.

“Look, I know that nothing I say can turn back time and make things right. But I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry I wasn’t there for everyone, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I know that’s not enough.” He seems to have shrunk in on himself, his shoulders set, as if ready to get hit. “All I can say is that I won’t let this happen again, I swear, because this is the worst I’ve felt in a long time. Just... I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” Patrice says. He never wanted a fight. He wants— 

Brad searches his face, plaintive now. “And, like, you know I do fucking mean it, right? I’m serious about not letting anything like this happen in the future. I’m making a blood oath, like. On my grandma’s honor. A personal promise _to you_ that I’m going to do better and not let this happen anymore.” His voice is urgent with emotion, desperately sincere.

 _Don’t make promises you can’t keep._ Patrice shakes his head. “Not for me,” he says, quietly, trying not to make it harsh. “Don’t do it for me, I’m... I’m just a teammate, you know? This is something you have to do for sake of the team, for the fans. For yourself. I can’t tell you to change for my sake. You have to want it for _you._ ” 

This is the conclusion Patrice has come to. He believes Brad’s desire to change, but he also believes that this is ultimately who Brad is. Most of the time, he _likes_ who Brad is, a great deal; why then is he so angry now, when it’s mostly a matter of the worst possible timing?

And yet. He tries to separate it all out, his anger and hurt and all the other other stray frustrated wants and desires caught up around his relationship with Brad Marchand, tucks it all away into a cold, clear box. Leaving nothing lying jaggedly out in the open except the normal, occasionally intense, but overall _manageable_ emotions one feels towards just a teammate.

Brad’s face falls, and there’s a deep furrow in his brow. Part of Patrice wants to reach out and ease it to smoothness, but he shunts that part to go into the box with the rest of everything. “I know you _can_ , okay?” he says, relenting slightly against the coldness freezing his hands at his sides. “Just... it’s up to you. It’s on you.” _Leave me out of it._

Brad looks away, down at the floor, but he nods once, tight and sharp. Patrice leaves him there, letting the door click shut behind him.

#

Life goes on. Marchy returns to the lineup on Patrice’s left, and they still click as well as they always have. It’s a team sport and they’re still good teammates. That’s all.

Marchy plays careful; still working hard along the boards and in the corners; perhaps just a touch tentative in his hits and with his stick positioning. Patrice hears him mouthing off, but without his previous vitriol. Half-hearted, like he’s mostly keeping up appearances.

Everybody is working hard to forget, to kick January 1st out with the rest of 2015: unmemorable, far away. “I knew you guys missed me, but I didn’t think you were _that_ depressed about it,” Kells says, with black humor, at the lingering bleakness in the room. “Get your shit together, eh?” 

Tuukka goes around in a thundering mood for four days, extra violence in every movement, but after that it starts to dissipate into ordinary crankiness. Loui turns incrementally stiffer and more silent. Torey, ever the grownup, has managed to successfully compartmentalize, and tries to likewise cheer up anyone who seems to be dwelling. Krej hangs around in the training room working carefully around his injured side, longer than he strictly ought, but no one has the heart to tell him not to.

For a while, shame made Marchy a small, glum presence in the locker room. Kells takes one look at him and says, “Oh, so getting one little suspension means you’re no fun anymore?” and proceeds to give Marchy an unceasing stream of shit about it.

The first few times, Marchy goes silent and takes it. But before very long at all he starts to look sulky and mutinous, and then finally he narrows his eyes and snaps, “You want me to break your other leg for you too? You’re like a fucking old goat ramming repeatedly into a _wall._ I get it, okay? Jesus.”

Which of course makes Kells laugh heartily, and then Marchy laughs too, and then they make fun of each other’s most serious issues constantly, in friendly fashion. It’s starting to drive Patrice slightly insane.

Likewise, as time passes, Patrice hears him come back to life with everyone else too, joking freely again with Torey and Talbo and the rest. He’s perhaps a shade more subdued than before, but it’s impossible for him to change in this way also.

In many ways, Patrice would like to join them all in letting this drift into the past. But a cold knot sticks in his throat, refusing to dissolve, and their interactions are brief and practical, skittering across the surface of a frozen lake.

#

The thing is, Patrice has been watching Brad for a long time. He’s bright and funny and wide open, generous with his words and his spirit. He fidgets through intermissions, leg jiggling or fingers tapping as he dutifully snacks, eager for the seconds to tick faster down until he can be on the ice again. He feels good tucked under Patrice’s chin when they hug. He’ll crow, “That was fucking gorgeous! Sick pass, Bergy,” glowing with triumph after their line combines for a score, “You and me, baby.” 

And Patrice had thought that too: you and me, making each other better. And he’d let it become personal. He’d started to want more than the illusion of closeness you get after a shared rush of adrenalin, the sharing of victory.

He never felt a sense of urgency about it. There’s time, he’d think, and smile privately, fondly. He hadn’t wanted to rush into anything. 

#

When he learns there’s to be a hearing, dread descends first, chased immediately by raw, fierce anger. “Shit. Fuck. Fucking _fuck._ Osti de tabarnak de _calice,_ ” he swears, to his uncaring kitchen.

Very briefly, he considers the notion that Marchy might make it out with a fine, then pointedly sets that thought on fire. No. He wonders how Brad must be feeling, and then decides he doesn’t care.

His phone buzzes, and his pulse spikes with the thought that it might be Brad himself, calling to make his excuses or apologies or whatever shitty things he might try to say. But it turns out to be Z. “You heard?” Z says, no time for pleasantries.

“Yes,” Patrice says tightly.

“Yes,” Z echoes, followed by a gusting sigh. They share a moment of frustrated silence. Z says, “How are you doing?”

“I want to kill him,” Patrice says, too honestly. “Just a little bit. Not too painful, you know, just... quick and easy.” He laughs darkly. Perhaps it’s an uncharacteristic thought. He’d had such sweet visions of him and Marchy out there in the cold air, surrounded by the noise of an entire stadium, the passes between the two of them beautiful, unstoppable.

Z laughs shortly too. “I know. Yeah, I know. But, it happened. He can’t change it now. Try and forgive him, okay? After you kill him just a little bit.”

“Give me time,” Patrice sighs.

The news after the hearing confirms the death of the dream. What blooms is a sense of surprising, sharp, personal hurt, as if Brad did this _to Patrice_ , as deliberate as the ending of a relationship. _It wasn’t working out. It’s not you, it’s me._

They’d given him the A, and Patrice remembers being so proud, that the world would see what he sees in Brad all the time. What a fucking joke.

Brad doesn’t text or call, and Patrice certainly isn’t going to, when all he wants to do is hurt Brad back. He knows it’s unfair; still, there it is. There’s no stopping this tide of personal betrayal washing through him.

He puts his elbows down on the kitchen island, head in his hands, and breathes.

#

The Winter Classic comes and there simply isn’t enough time to adjust around the wrongness. Marchy’s absence on Patrice’s left jars him every time. Griff is a good kid, a good player, but young and raw; he doesn’t react in ways Patrice wants him to. He isn’t quite fast enough. He has to take an extra half-second to locate Patrice.

Every other line has the same issues, it seems. “Keep going, boys, we can fucking do this. We can fucking do this. We _can_ ,” Patrice says, vowing to himself, with an edge of vindictiveness, _We can do this without them._

Of course, as it turns out, they really can’t.

Marchy’s there, looking tragic and shellshocked in his neat suit after they all make their escape from the handshake line, the let-down spectators, the accusing eye of the national TV cameras. At least he’s not hiding. Everyone’s too numb to acknowledge him much anyway. He tries to catch Patrice’s eye, but Patrice looks down and pointedly away.

Patrice lets Krej give a consolatory half-hug, knowing it’s hard for him too. And Griff looks practically sick with shame, avoiding Patrice’s eyes as surely as Patrice is avoiding Marchy’s. He’ll have to talk with him later, make sure Seth knows that it’s not his fault. But for now, Patrice makes for the showers as quickly as he can.

He stays under the water for longer than necessary, and he’s not the only one. He’d like to wash himself clean of frustration, of anger. Yet even toweling off and surrounded with steam, his chest feels tight and colder than ever.

He needs time.

#

Patrice thinks he’s been quite good, really, at preventing the splintered icy resentment from escaping his secret heart and affecting his interactions with Marchy. He’s been polite, responded with brief smiles to Brad’s tentative efforts at engagement. He’s mouthed platitudes to the reporters about moving on. They’ve celebrated goals together. On the surface, at least, all is well enough.

So he’s momentarily shocked when he opens the front door expecting a neighbor or a missionary and it’s Brad instead, looking sheepish but determined. “Can I come in?” he says.

Patrice lets him in. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asks, on autopilot.

“Double shot of whiskey, maybe,” Brad mutters. “That was a joke,” he adds, when Patrice looks abortively towards his liquor cabinet. “Look, I just. Okay, I’m not going to apologize, again, because obviously that didn’t... I don’t...” He trails into beseeching silence.

Patrice waits him out.

Brad huffs out a sigh. “I mean, there has to be something I can do. Please.”

“For what?” Patrice says, refusing to meet him halfway.

“To make things right between us, okay? I know you’re mad. I don’t blame you. You ought to be really fucking mad, I get that. I just... I hate how, like, fake and polite you’re being right now. I’d rather you yelled at me, or like punched me. If that helps, you can totally punch me in the face.” Brad stares at him, almost savage, and he sounds dead serious. “Go for it. Or hey, I’ll get down on my knees and literally fucking grovel if that would help. Is that what you want?” Ever dramatic, Brad starts to actually go down to his knees — Patrice’s throat constricts, because it’s not like he’s never _had_ thoughts about Brad on his knees — but not like this.

“Don’t,” he says. “That’s not going to help.”

Brad stands up straight, his arms crossed protectively across his chest. “Then what? We can’t keep going like this, it’s fucking terrible. Don’t lie to me and say you don’t care, that it’s fine.”

Patrice blows out a frustrated breath. Trust Brad to get angry while seeking forgiveness. “I am fine with it. I’m fine, okay? Why does this matter so much to you?”

“Of course it matters to me. Your opinion matters to me, _a lot, obviously_ , and I know you fucking know that.” He’s glaring now, like it’s _Patrice’s_ fault.

“Why? Why me, more than Coach Julien, or Z, or Torey or any other of the teammates you let down? We play together on a line. So? So what?” Patrice wants to tear at his hair, to shout _Are we even friends?_ — just barely manages to keep those destructive words tucked under his tongue.

“Don’t fucking say that. Don’t pretend like there’s never been more than _that_ ,” Brad snarls.

“You are who you are, Brad. All I want is...” he laughs abruptly, ugly. “Is for you to change who you are. To not play like such an idiot and hurt people and get suspended when we fucking needed you. When _I_ needed you.” He takes a couple of sharp, deep breaths. Brad must be thrilled to see him lose it like this, so unlike him. “But I’m not that selfish. I can’t ask you to change everything for _my_ sake.”

“Yes, you fucking _can,”_ Brad says. "Of _course_ you can," and kisses him.

It’s a shock of bright sensation, his mouth hot, his hand on Patrice’s neck yanking Patrice down to meet him. Patrice kisses back, suddenly burning with it. All of a sudden he’s backing Brad up against the nearest wall. He wants, he wants—

“I wanted to win the Winter Classic with you,” he gasps, pulling back, hair mussed and eyes probably wild. “I want you to be _better_.” It feels good to take everything out of the icebox. To give the unbounded truth.

“Next time,” Brad vows, “I will,” even as he drags Patrice back in for another fervent kiss. It’s good, it’s good, it’s _so_ good—

Patrice tells him, “I’m still angry at you,” even as his hands move inexorably under Brad’s shirt, drawn by the compact strength all there to be felt. He is — only the anger has turned from cold to hot, mixed with all the wanting he’s stored up for what seems like years. He feels capable of incineration.

“Good.” Brad sounds all too pleased. “Oh— fuck—” he gasps as Patrice presses him into the wall with real authority.

Kissing him is a rush equal to winning any game. So is seeing the look on his face when Patrice drops to his knees.

“Uh, are you sure you don’t want me to do that?” Brad blinks down at Patrice, his face blotchily flushed, his hair going in all directions. He looks incredible, frankly.

Patrice says, “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” and goes for the zipper of Brad’s jeans. 

He hasn’t sucked dick in years, but he likes to think he’s still got plenty of enthusiasm and sense memory. Brad certainly seems to think so, his fingers scrabbling at the wall as he pants and moans, his knees apparently going a bit weak. Patrice smiles to himself and takes Brad in deeper, nearly choking himself, getting filthy and wet and as good as he can make it.

“Bergy— Patrice, _fuck_ , I’m going to—” Brad groans, clutching at Patrice’s hair— so Patrice pulls away, at once.

The effect is everything he could have wanted: Brad in disarray, an anguished whine escaping his throat. 

“You’re going to be better. For me,” Patrice demands, suffused with pleasure and greedy from the hot joy of possession.

“Yes, yes, I, fucking, anything you want,” Brad says. “Please, yes, I’ll—”

Patrice feels nearly drunk with power. “Yes, you will. Because I want you to.”

Patrice takes him to bed and takes him apart. He presses kisses across Brad’s back, over his ridiculous Hockey Canada tattoo, down the length of his spine. He bites lightly at the strong curve of ass, reveling in the sharp intake of breath, the groan. He touches everything he can reach. He wants, he wants.

He turns Brad over so they’re facing each other again, happy to observe the look of desperation on Brad’s face. “Okay?”

“I thought you’d be way less of an asshole about this kind of thing, to be honest. Saint Patrice, my ass,” Brad says raggedly, the urgency of his desire ruining his attempt at a smirk.

Patrice laughs helplessly — this is who Brad is, this is who Patrice wants. He’s deeply imperfect, he’s _such_ a dick, a mouthy idiot, a maddening frustration. He’s all Patrice wants. Entranced with this revelation, Patrice says, “I want to fuck you. Can I?”

Brad blinks up at him, hard. “Yeah, okay. Yes, fuck you, are you trying to kill me with blue balls here? I mean, fuck me, yes, I want you to—”

Patrice shudders, has to kiss him again, getting distracted by his scent, his body straining upwards against Patrice’s weight. “I’m going to wreck you,” Patrice promises. “I want— ah, I want to fuck you so bad—”

“Oh god. Oh. Shit. Yes— so do it already,” Brad pants out, already looking fairly wrecked and all the better for it.

Patrice hunts down lube and condoms, then bends to the task of wreckage. For all his words of _now, faster, more, now_ , Brad is so fucking _tight_ on Patrice’s fingers. Patrice tries to control his breathing, adds more lube, takes his time stretching and stretching until Brad starts to lose his words — they’re blurring together into unintelligibility. Every utterance is sweeter than the last.

Eventually it’s too hard to resist; Patrice decides enough is enough, he's had enough of waiting, of _time_. Brad lets him arrange limbs to his liking; then he eases in slow, so slow, while Brad clutches at the sheets, panting like he’s just come off a 3-on-3. It’s too good, he’s so— and then he’s all the way in, _inside_ him, and Brad is trembling very slightly, his eyes shut tight.

“Okay?” Patrice asks, as gently as he can manage.

“Yeah,” Brad slurs, and then they’re completely caught up in heat and movement, consuming, as Patrice fucks him, setting a relentless, steady pace right from the start. Part of him is still angry, only it’s alchemized into this perverse need to overwhelm Brad with pleasure, and every moan and half-word he fucks out of Brad only makes him want it harder.

“Fuck— _fuck_ , oh—” Brad wails, as Patrice closes a spit-wet hand around Brad’s cock, jerkily stroking.

Brad comes like that, with a series of ragged half-moans, his body tensing unbearably against Patrice’s continuing thrusts. It’s too good. Patrice recognizes in himself a desire to see this, to feel this, again and again, as often as he reasonably or unreasonably can.

The thought of having Brad like this over and over— Patrice eases out as smoothly as he can manage, strips off the condom and barely has to stroke himself twice before he’s coming in waves, messy and everywhere across Brad’s stomach.

“Ah, fuck,” Patrice chokes out. He feels nearly light-headed with release and with victory. He looks down. Brad, gazing up at him, already looks fucking smug, even in his wrecked, come-covered state.

It’s not exactly subtle, but Patrice finds that he doesn’t mind.

Patrice gets up to go for something to wipe it all up with, and Brad calls after him, “God. Saint Patrice, you’re a fucking beast, you know that?”

“Don’t call me that,” Patrice groans, falling onto the bed next to his... his whatever. His winger. His menace. His. “You’re staying, right?”

“Unless you kick me out, I’m staying.”

“I’m still mad at you, you know.”

“Okay, good,” Brad says peaceably, and gets comfortable on Patrice’s pillow.

#

It’s hard to remain terribly angry when the object of one’s anger tries to make you breakfast in the morning after your night of hot possessive sex, can’t figure out the coffee maker, and then cheerfully demands a cappuccino when you make it into the kitchen. At least, Patrice finds this to be so.

He finds himself thinking: the Winter Classic, after all, is only one regular season game. Even if Brad had played, perhaps, nothing. Perhapses, maybes, what ifs. He finds them at last fading against the reality of Brad with bed-tumbled hair and cold bony feet kicking amicably at Patrice under the kitchen island, sipping his cappuccino and smirking. Time has passed. He was angry, and hurt; now, less so.

It might not even be the last time they’ll go through this, he thinks — future fines and suspensions and bad plays may yet come — but at this moment Patrice feels at peace with that eventuality. Time and anger and all will come and pass then, too. Let it.

“At least I didn’t break the coffee maker, you know? This thing is smarter than like half our teammates. Kells, for sure,” Brad complains. “I almost threw it across the room and then you’d _really_ have something to be mad about.”

Patrice laughs. “I’d forgive you,” he says, and means it.

**Author's Note:**

> Come, [find me on Tumblr](http://sphesphe.tumblr.com), especially if you have horrible soul-crushing feelings about Brad Marchand and the Bruins!


End file.
